Predictably, the column got some people riled up. Commenters complained that I was getting unnecessarily overheated, that I didnât have my priorities straight (âFirst World problem!â), and that my subjective opinion of the software was simply incorrect.

None of these comments bothered me. Well, OK, they bothered me a little bit, because I want everyone to be won over by my genius insights. But there are loads of dissenters on every column I write,âso nothing about this situation was particularly unusual.

I was slightly more annoyed, though, by the few comments that suggested I was being disingenuous â that the headline and my stridency were evidence that I didnât actually believe what Iâd written. Instead, I was just being controversial for controversyâs sake. What if the point of the column wasnât to make any coherent argument about iTunes at all but instead to kick up a hornetâs nest â to get Apple fans frothingly riled up for no good reason other than to laugh at their misplaced passion over music software?

In fact, thatâs probably what I was doing right then â sitting in my big comfy recliner, laptop resting at my feet, and laughing deep, belly-pounding laughs at all the stupid readers who were falling for my page-view-hoarding punking.

Because that, you see, is the real goal of writing controversial things online â to see how crazy people become when they mistakenly think youâre being genuine, which you never are.

People didnât spell all this out, of course. They didnât have to. Instead they reached for a bit of internet slang that connotes all these sly intentions in a single, efficient syllable: troll.

âAre you just trolling with the iTunes piece?â Christina Warren, a writer at Mashable social media news site and my internet friend, asked me on Twitter. âOur experiences [with iTunes] are totally opposite.â

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I was honestly surprised by Warrenâs and other troll-hurlersâ reactions. Sure, my piece and its headline were hyperbolic â nobody, not even software engineers, gets that fired up about software. But that over-the-top stance was intentional, a rhetorical device to make a point about iTunesâ awfulness. (And iTunes is genuinely, unmitigatedly awful.) This seemed obvious to me. So why had some people misinterpreted my passion as a sign of insincerity?

Iâll tell you why: trolling has been defined down. Not long ago trolls were easy to identify â they were the kids on 4Chan who caused trouble just for the lulz, or the delinquents who disrupted otherwise serious online discussion of folklore with out-of-nowhere, baiting speculation about Tolkienâs cross-dressing fetish (or something like that).

Trolls â these people who picked fights just to pick fights â soon escaped online bulletin boards. Now theyâre everywhere, and rather than just cause trouble for kids who love Zelda adventure games, trolls have put themselves at the centre of serious, high-minded discussion.

The thing about trolls is that you never quite know when youâre dealing with one; they come in all shapes and sizes, and even if someone seems halfway genuine about what heâs saying, youâd be a fool to buy it.

Even someone as anodyne as TheâNew York Timesâs political commentator David Brooks â David Brooks! â is secretly trolling you, and youâre an idiot for taking him seriously. Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, anyone on Fox News â troll, troll, troll, troll, troll!

The Daily Mail. The New York Times.
Donald Trump
. Folks who disagreed with Nate Silver. Katie Roiphe â big, big troll. But why should I be surprised? And, of course, the late Christopher Hitchens. Then, finally, thereâs the troll of trolls, the woman who has elevated trolling into an art form â ex-Vanity Fair, ex-The New Yorker, ex-Talk editor
Tina Brown
, now editor-in-chief of TheâDaily Beast.

On the off-chance you have trouble spotting a pattern in that list, let me offer this helpful rule, a definition for troll circa 2012: any time you donât like something someone else is saying, or even if you do like what theyâre saying but think they might be saying it the wrong way, thereâs a very good chance youâre dealing with a troll.

This could be true even if the person is making an argument that purports to bolster your position â in that case, they may be a âconcern trollâ. The corollary to making this identification is that youâre free to ignore them, per the universal troll-handling guidelines: Donât feed them! (Although I should note that no one follows this; Google overflows with the phrase âI know I shouldnât feed the troll .â.â.â)

Or, on the other hand, let me suggest something somewhat unconventional. What if all these people arenât trolls? What if theyâre just, you know, disagreeable or stupid or merely wrong?

What if, despite holding opinions that you donât like, and despite expressing those opinions in a manner that seems a tad impolite, they came by their views honestly?